Baby Blue

Writer's block. Writer's block. Writer's block.

Write in blocks. Write in black. Write in blue.

Baby blue ............................................. Baby blue, Baby Blue.

Once upon a time there was a magic gnome who's name was Baby Blue. He lived with his wife in Agatha's garden, in an upturned sand bucket in her prettiest foxglove flower bed. Legend says the gnome granted a wish to anyone who came to his door. But one wish, and one wish only, no matter the outcome: that was Baby Blue's rule.

'How's the writing going?' said Chris as he set down a cream cheese bagel and a cup of tea next to my typewriter.

I usually wrote in the study, occasionally in the kitchen if Chris wasn't home. This was my first time writing outdoors, albeit at the patio table in the back garden, ten feet from the house.

'Much better,' I lied. 'I think you were right, honey. I just needed some fresh air and a little greenery.'

Chris was the pragmatic sort. I appreciated that about him because I was anything but pragmatic. But this time - not that his idea hadn't been worth a shot - I knew where the writer's block was coming from, and if there was a solution, it had nothing to do with fresh air and daffodils.

'Told you!' said Chris. 'Well then, I better not disturb you. I'm off to work. Don't forget to eat your bagel and drink your tea before it goes cold. I know what you're like when you get in your little zone!'

He kissed me on the cheek and strode back into the house. 'Bye, honey!' He was cheerful, I suppose, with the impression that his prescription was working.

I wasn't hungry but I ate the bagel anyway, and drank the tea. Chris does make a good cuppa, I'll give him that. We'd been married for eighteen months. When we met, he was a junior GP at the local surgery and I was working part time as a driving instructor. Shortly after the wedding, during a lesson, one of my students - a young girl named Nancy - collided with an articulated lorry. We were going fifty miles an hour. By some miracle neither of us were badly injured, but we were both deeply affected by the accident. Nancy and I became good friends, bonded, I suppose, by the trauma. But I couldn't go back to being an instructor.

Chris encouraged me to return to writing children's stories; a passion of mine since I was a little girl. Whenever my parents scolded me, I would go up to the attic and write grand tales about princesses killing giants, or mermaids swarming pirate ships. Chris thought it would be therapeutic, and he was right. Last year I self published a book of short stories to surprisingly positive reception. Naturally, I couldn't wait to venture a second outing, this time as bona fide author.

But life, as life does, had been quietly and diligently watering its lemon trees in the background, and last month it delivered to me a big, bitter basketful.

I was infertile.

I was too afraid to tell Chris. We hadn't seriously discussed having kids, but I knew he wanted them. Certainly more than I did. I'd come to believe there might be a career for me in writing, and I yearned to pursue it, but how could I write children's books with this awful black cloud hanging over our marriage?

That morning, I decided I couldn't. I decided I would have to write in a different genre entirely- at least for now. I yanked the page from my typewriter's platen, scrunched it in my fist and threw it over the garden fence. Not a moment later it flew back over and landed in my empty teacup. Startled, I stood up and yelled, 'I'm very sorry!'

I had forgotten we had new neighbours. Not that that excuses my littering, of course. 'How stupid of me! Hello?'

When no one responded I crept over to the fence, still in my slippers and nighty. 'Hello? I'm Agatha. Your neighbour.'

Careful not to trample the foxgloves, I pressed an ear to the dark varnished panels ... Not a peep. I slid my fingers up over the top and stood on the tips of my toes. I peered over. On the other side was a very short, ruddy cheeked old man with a long white beard, glaring up at me. He was brandishing a pair of garden shears.

'Hi, I'm Agatha,' I said, meekly.

He huffed and snapped the shears but a few inches from my nose. I squeaked like a bedspring and staggered back, squashing the innocent foxgloves.

'I really am terribly sorry!'

'Honey!' came the man's gruff voice through the timber.

'Pardon?'

I felt a sting. An enormous splinter had wedged in the bend of my finger, letting a tear of blood that welled around my wedding ring. 'Ow Ow Owww,' I cried as I plucked the monster from my flesh.

'We need honey! Do you have honey?'

'Yes!' I yelled back. 'Yes, we have honey.' I sucked my finger and patted my nighty down with my other hand, and waited for his reply. When none came, I said 'So, I'll just bring it over then?'

I fixed myself up with a plaster and got dressed before grabbing a jar of honey from the pantry (as it happens I was something of a jam and honey connoisseur.) I made my way next door. As nervous as the old man had made me, I couldn't help but smile when I saw he'd painted his front door baby blue. Writers relish coincidence since we can rarely afford it in prose.

Before I could knock, the door swung open. The old man greeted me with a huff and a cock of the head, signalling me to follow him up the hall.

The house was much smaller and much older than ours. Our previous neighbours, the Blytons, had been an ungregarious pair. Not in an impolite way - Chris and I had occasionally caught them on deckchairs out front when the weather was warm, and they'd engaged with us in small talk, asked us how we were settling in and so on - but we always got the sense that an invitation to supper or scrabble was best left off the table. Needless to say, this was the first time I'd seen the interior of the house.

The hall was bare. The lime coloured walls were entirely unadorned, and besides a tall, rickety grandfather clock, whose every tick seemed to carry its tock like a wounded comrade, the only other welcomers were a royal green rug laid frivolously in a languid zag, and a large and decidedly uninquisitive brass pig, who I assumed was a doorstop of sorts.

Things quickly came alive, however, once we entered the kitchen. It was a forest of pots and pans and spoons and ladles and all manner of curiosities: fragrant posies of dried flowers, jars of rufous stock brim with foamy fat, an assortment of clay mortars sparkling with bright powders all ground together in little swirls of rainbow. There were pumpkins - my favourite - huge and aplenty. Fat bulbs of garlic swung from the beams. So many strange utensils I could barely name a few- and the centerpiece; a stout oak dinner table, buttoned with dribbly white candle stubs.

'I brought honey,' I said. To my great surprise a lady in a white shawl (who I'd mistaken for an ironing board leant against the pantry's mullion!) spun around and said, 'Honey!'

'Good Lord!' I exclaimed.

'Oh, I'm sorry,' she said. 'Did I frighten you?'

The old man chortled.

'Shush yourself, mister!' said the lady. He skulked over to a stool in the corner and sat and stroked his beard like a cat.

'I'm Tabatha. I'm the old fool's wife, I'm sorry to say.'

'I'm Agatha. From next door. It's a pleasure to meet you.'

'Ooooo! Did you hear that! Our next door neighbour, come to visit us!'

The old man scoffed. Tabatha glowered at him and ushered me to the dinner table. 'Come, come, do sit down, won't you?'

It struck me that she and the man looked very alike. They had the same round blue eyes, the same big squidgy nose, the same ruddy cheeks. They were the same height - no taller than five feet - and they had the same stockiness about the body and shoulders. But what really stood out were their fingers; more precisely their index fingers, which all four of them were a good inch longer than the others, and even thinner than their pinkies.

I set the honey down and sat at the end of the dinner table. Tabatha joined me at the near corner place, very close to me. To my consternation she took my hand and held it tightly. I can't say I wasn't unsettled by it, but when she smiled, I felt a distinct and reassuring kindliness.

'Tea!' she screamed.

The old man hopped to attention and clattered around in the cupboards.

'Oh, I'm fine, really I am,' I said. I looked around the kitchen, not too flagrantly avoiding her eyes, I hoped. 'It's a beautiful home you have. I regret to say we never saw it when the Blytons lived here.'

'Yes, well, it's always been a folly of the ambitious to fraternise with the insular.'

'Excuse me?' I said, taken aback.

'What about your husband?' she said, tightening her grip on my hand. 'He's the ambitious type, is he?'

'Oh, well, he's a doctor here in the village.'

'Ooooo, a doctor!' She turned to the old man. 'Did you hear that! We have a doctor right next door!' He rolled his eyes and struck a match, and held it at arm's length as he lit the hob cautiously under the kettle. When the flame flowered he shook out the match and backed away from the cooker slowly, like an ancient turtle retreating into its shell.

'Now we know we're in safe hands,' said Tabatha. 'Bless you, bless you.' She picked up the honey and asked, 'Is this for us?'

'Yes. It's a local Buckwheat.'

'Wonderful, wonderful. We do love a little honey in our tea. But we never keep any in the house. Can you guess why?'

I was a little disappointed that she hadn't inquired further about my honey, and was about to proffer some knowledge of it when the old man blurted out, 'Because it all too easily burns.'

'Oh! Just for once,' bellowed Tabatha, 'would you shut up? Stuff that silly beard in your mouth, if that's what it takes!'

He cowered from her. I giggled, despite the eccentricity of it all. She patted down her shawl and settled her eyes on me again. 'Because it all too easily burns,' she said.

I stifled my laughter on my fist and nodded.

'You see, to our kind,' she continued, 'fire is-'

The kettle howled before she could finish. She let go of my hand, finally, and the old man served us all steaming hot cups of tea. He joined us at the table next to his wife.

My initial nervousness evaporated. Although the situation was undoubtedly strange, I found myself increasingly comfortable in their presence. The more we chinwagged of neighbourly topics - the fastest route to the main road, what day the binmen come, when to expect a queue at the post office - the more familiar it all became, and my peculiar hosts gradually rounded out to no greater a threat than the tomatoes that cuddled in their fruit bowls. Even their uncanny likeness - no less striking as the minutes turned to hours, mind - began to charm rather than disturb me.

The topic came around to what I did for a living.

'For a living?' I said. 'I suppose the real answer to that is I am married. In terms of staying alive, that's what I do.'

The old man poured more tea. He hadn't much engaged in the conversation but I got the sense he was listening intently.

'What do you wish you could do?' said Tabby. 'If you could wish it into being.'

I sighed and stroked my cheek. 'I wishhhh ... I wish, I wish. What do I wish?'

Writer's block. Writer's block. Writer's block.

Write in blocks. Write in black. Write in blue.

Baby blue............................................. Baby blue, Baby Blue.

'I wish I could sit in my study, or wherever I want, and write, freely and without guilt. With no guilt, that's the important part. You can't write children's books when you're guilty. Every other book, you can write. But not children's books. It isn't fair on them. They're out of the question ... Children are out of the question.'

I burst into tears.

Tabby whip-cracked a hanky from inside her shawl and mopped my cheeks with a tenderness I hadn't felt since before the accident.

'There it is, there it is,' said Tabby. 'All coming out now. All the silliness.' She put her arm around me and stroked my spine up and down with her spindly finger. She nodded to her husband. He nodded back and left the kitchen.

'I'm not even sure I wanted children. But Chris will surely leave me when he finds out I can't. And if he doesn't, how can I possibly write what I want to write?'

'There, there. My sweet thing, everything will come right as rain, you'll see!'

The old man returned and set down on the table what looked like a musical keyboard, although, all the keys were black and many more than any piano. He blew off a thick layer of dust and started tapping the keys at a blistering speed with his incredibly long index fingers: the device made no sound, but the old man closed his eyes and tilted his head as though listening to it. 'Zero,' he said. '... One ... Seven.'

'What's that?' I asked.

'That?' said Tabby. 'Well, we couldn't let you leave all a blubber, could we?'

'Eight ... Three ...' He continued till he'd spoken eleven digits. He opened his eyes and recited them all back quickly, with an ardent glee that I hadn't seen a hint of in him all morning. 'I've still got it, Tabatha! I've still got it!'

'Yes, yes, pipe down, you,' said Tabby, before turning to me with a stern, Grandmotherly countenance. 'The Blytons,' she said, 'were a terribly unambitious couple. Content to orbit one another forever, like Earth and Moon, never allowing - never needing - to be amongst the stars, where so many stories could be told.'

A twinge of nervousness came back and poked me in the ribs. Tabby and the old man stared at me with their piercing, perfectly round blue eyes. For a moment I felt rather like a little girl again, about to be set upon by my parents. Or like I imagined Chris would make me feel once I confessed my infertility. But again, Tabby's kind smile settled me. She continued: 'You, my sweet thing, you're not like that ... and you're not like this-'

To my shock, Tabby reached over to her husband and snatched off his beard. All of it! Right off his face! She fluffed it vigorously then pressed it around her mouth, and huffed just like her husband. I nearly fell off my seat!

'You're better,' came Tabby's voice from the old man, who now looked just like Tabby.

'What did you do?' I pleaded. 'Which one of you is which!'

'I'm Tabatha, silly!' said the one without the beard. 'Look at me.'

I fanned my chest and tried to slow my heart. 'How ... how did you do that?'

Tabby - or the one who looked like Tabby now - chuckled and gestured to the old man, who gave her his white shawl. She wrapped herself up and said to him, 'Telephone,' to which he went and unhooked the receiver from the wall and handed it to me.

'Zero, one, seven,' he said.

'You want me to dial those numbers? What is this? What will that do?'

Tabby shaped her fingers above the keyboard and slammed down a silent chord. She closed her eyes and said, 'Can't you hear it?'

'Hear what?' I said.

'The answer.'

I can't say if I was motivated by fear or curiosity, suspicion or trust that I dialled the digits the old man administered. But by the eighth digit I recognised who's number I was calling.

'Hello?' said Nancy on the other end, and before I could respond, I heard in the background Chris's voice say, 'Honey! Come back to bed!'

As all couples do, I'd imagined scenarios where I caught my spouse being unfaithful. But never had I anticipated exhilaration. Exhilaration that danced around like sparks on glowing coal. Propriety in the presence of others barely contained it: I handed the phone back to the old man and asked as calmly as I could if I may call a taxi.

'No need, my sweet thing ' said Tabby, and slid the jar of honey across the table. The old man tossed me his box of matches. 'Remember, it burns all too easily.'

'Thank you,' I said.

Tabby leant over the table and kissed me on the cheek. In a flash of white light I was outside Nancy's house, standing next to Chris's car.

'I'll write where and what I damn well want,' I yelled as I poured honey through the sunroof.

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